Hajj Season at the Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs — Palestine

- From the reports of the General Directorate for the Oversight of Social and Cultural Services, I selected for you from the texts of the Bureau's annual report for 2020 the substance of the General Directorate for the Oversight of Social and Cultural Services... on the Hajj season at the Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs... for 2019... that is the year 1440 Hijri, and this report will be published in parts... given the importance of your being informed of it, and reading what I noticed during my study of this report, of committing administrative sins... a violation not only of the laws and regulations in force, but also of the feelings of citizens in particular, and a disregard for them, and even for the sanctity and majesty of seasons of Hajj and Umrah and the holy places..... All work that deviates from purity, trustworthiness and credibility must stop..... I felt shocked by the exploitation of Palestinian pilgrims... and the lack of concern of the competent bodies... for the feelings, minds and understanding of the faithful people... What increases my pain and bitterness is the repetition of the same act in other pilgrimage seasons in previous years.. about which the State Audit and Administrative Control Bureau (SAACB) wrote... in Palestine..... and there is no deterrent... to stop or dissuade anyone who violates transparency, integrity, honesty and respect for public responsibilities in the public service... from such administrative sins..... Below are some examples narrated by the report.. subject of the inquiry:

- The Bureau carried out a compliance audit of Hajj operations for 1440 Hijri – 2019, and based on the available data, documents and records, the report concluded the following:

1- There is a malfunction in the management of the electronic Hajj lottery system in terms of:

2- Deletion of registrants' records for Hajj from the electronic system without justification.

3- Adding citizens' data to the Hajj lottery system before collecting the fees from them.

4- Deleting the records of winners of the electronic lottery from the preparation records.

5- Failure to enter a number of registrants into the Hajj lottery, and repetition of Hajj registrants' data in an unclear manner.

6- Entering data for pilgrims under the classification of approved pilgrims who had no records, via the 2011 lottery waiting lists.

7- Entering data for pilgrims outside the registration period granted by the Ministry, and before conducting the lottery by several days.

8- Entering data as a winner of the Hajj lottery before the lottery was executed... which negatively affects the credibility of the lottery results.

9- The date of granting the lottery winner and the mechanism of winning it (electronic lottery, addition of approved pilgrims, mission, administrative employee)... are not recorded in the Hajj lottery system... which leads to difficulty in verifying the mechanism of winning the Hajj lottery.

10- Weakness in controlling the inputs of the Hajj lottery system in terms of ID number, date of birth, registration date, where duplication of ID numbers among pilgrims was observed, errors in date of birth, errors in registration date...!

11- From analyzing the data of citizens nominated for Hajj 2019.. it was found that 1,050 records had an unclear degree of kinship among them in the Ministry of Interior records (Civil Registry).

· Ministry procedures related to transportation and accommodation services..

- Although the Ministry has sufficient experience in knowing the number of beds available in hotels (Nawazi, Atheer and Al-Ard Al-Mumtazah Hotel), it was found that 661 additional beds were rented beyond the actual number of pilgrims specified in the Hajj protocol for the year 1440 H - 2019 AD, and the total cost of this increase amounted to 981,585 dinars... which led to imposing additional financial burdens on the pilgrims at a rate of 240 dinars per pilgrim... in Mecca hotels...

- Charging the cost of the hotel used as the headquarters for the Hajj mission to the pilgrims' fees, at a rate of 195 riyals per pilgrim, noting that each pilgrim pays 80 Jordanian dinars... as part of the Hajj fees, in lieu of services of the Ministry of Awqaf... In addition, 50% of the people accommodated in that hotel are not part of the missions accompanying the pilgrims, and it is not the responsibility of the Ministry of Awqaf to provide housing services for them... which led to the pilgrims bearing additional financial burdens.!

- Renting 408 additional beds beyond the actual need of the pilgrims in Madinah hotels, and the cost of the surplus beds amounted to 602,527 Saudi riyals.. and thus charging the pilgrims 28 Jordanian dinars per pilgrim....!

- The Bureau team was not provided with the report of the committee for receiving pilgrims' accommodation in Madinah al-Munawwarah, and a summary of its results... in the Hajj season 1440..!

· Hajj missions and the Ministry's internal procedures

- We did not find evidence of communication between the Ministry of Awqaf and members of the media mission regarding defining the work program of the mission members, as the Ministry was content with obtaining the list of members of the media mission and including it within the list of other missions..

- There is no coordination between the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Awqaf in defining the tasks and nature of work of the security mission, which does not provide or show the added value of their presence as members of the Hajj season mission..

- Weak coordination between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Awqaf regarding the medical mission resulted in selecting some members of the medical mission whose qualifications did not match the nature of the tasks assigned to them... in addition to not linking the actual need for doctors required for the mission with the number of doctors delegated with the mission, to determine the suitability of the number of medical mission members for the Hajj season.

- The medical mission departed the territory of Mecca al-Mukarramah before the pilgrims departed it......, thus not benefiting from the mission members in case pilgrims encountered health risks during travel.. in addition to not adopting distribution of medical mission members across the pilgrims' buses, as they were assigned to a single transport bus... which could result in some pilgrims being exposed to severe risks without the presence of the medical mission..!